


—K.

by Inaccessible Rail (strangetales)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, archive warnings: nauseating couple stuff, archive warnings: v brief panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:03:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9827867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetales/pseuds/Inaccessible%20Rail
Summary: “He starts leaving notes after that. For anything and everything, if he leaves the house without her knowledge, he leaves a note.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iverna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iverna/gifts).



> A super sweet collaboration between myself and Svenja! If you'd like to see the incredibly awesome, handwritten versions of these various "notes," you can check out [this post](http://hencethebravery.tumblr.com/post/157453666086/k-11) on Tumblr! xo

She wakes up one morning and he’s not there. And it’s not as if she hasn’t woken up alone before, so it’s especially alarming when her breath starts coming in quick, painful stops and starts that she can’t seem to control. Emma Swan woke up alone her entire life. She woke up alone before she had even spoken her first word, woke up alone after her first nightmare, her first kiss, her first fuck, her first _child_ — Emma Swan wakes up alone. She goes to sleep alone, wakes up alone, eats alone, showers alone. It’s a perfectly normal occurrence, and then she meets Killian Jones. And she fights Killian Jones, leaves Killian Jones, talks and talks and _talks_ with Killian Jones. Falls in love with— loses, lost him, forever, it seemed like.

Returned, found again, still in love, and she can’t stop touching him, or looking at him, or kissing him, because before him she was alone. So when she wakes up one morning and his side of the bed is empty; a great, big, yawning abyss of empty space, her chest gets tight, and her face is _hot_ , and she fleetingly wonders whether or not she has a fever.

“Killian—” she starts, repulsively quiet, and timid, and all the things Emma Swan is _not_. Emma Swan is alone and loud, and _fine_. Only there’s something gravely amiss, and it can’t possibly be this empty bed that she’s seen a million times before, in a million different rooms, in a million different cities. An empty bed is an empty bed is an empty—

She tries to say his name again but it gets stuck halfway, like she’s swallowed a pit and it’s gotten lodged in her throat. When she shakily throws off the covers and swings her feet over the side she has an achingly sharp moment of clarity; it’s the glass in her foot, it’s the fractured, scattered pieces of glass all over the dark, buffed wooden floor. It’s shattered light bulbs and a mirror over her dresser, it’s _almost_ a window and she tries to take stock of the fluttering thing inside of her chest that can’t possibly be her heart. _Hearts shouldn’t beat this fast._

Is it some kind of curse? A spell, maybe?

He’s not there and suddenly he is, every lithe, tall inch of him, covered in unreasonably tight black fabric, his knobby knees pressed into all that glass and she tries to warn him only the pit seems to have gotten bigger in the last however many minutes, hours, or days have passed.

“Swan,” he says softly, cool hands gently cupping her very hot face, and then, a bit firmer, “ _Emma. Breathe._ ”

And she does.

…

He starts leaving notes after that. For anything and everything, if he leaves the house without her knowledge, he leaves a note. Sometimes more than one— mostly on paper in a loopy script that she secretly envies, sometimes using shaving cream on the bathroom mirror, and while cleaning it is a singularly annoying experience, she smiles the entire time.  


_Heading down to the docks, back in a tick, I promise. — Killian_

_Had to run to the store to get those disgusting pastries you love so much, will return **momentarily**. All my love, Killian_

_Your parents requested me at the loft, but I’ll return as soon as I can. Love always, K._

It’s absolutely absurd, she knows it is, and she can’t help but feel slightly foolish when she eyes the large, sloppy pile of paper in an old cigar box in her closet. Full of mismatched slips of nonsense in a variety of different colors, the only consistent thing being the comforting, looping letters of his impeccable penmanship. And aside from the occasional poem or longer, needier, journal-like notes that make her feel like a dictaphone, most of them are inconsequential.

Most of them should be lining the walls of a dumpster somewhere, like all the other “be back later” notes and doodles that all couples everywhere have been leaving each other since the beginning of time. But when she thinks about tossing them away, like they were nothing, like it was easy, her throat constricts and her face gets hot and she’s not sure she can do it just yet.

“It’s not like we _invented_ being a nauseating couple,” she mumbles against his chest, his arms a safe, steady presence around her, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Swan,” he answers softly, the lilting tones of his voice betraying a bright, familiar smile. “If anything there’s not _enough_ ,” she huffs and smacks his chest, “you’re too wonderful.”

“Don’t say that.”

Killian Jones knows better than most how imperfect Emma Swan can be, so it’s never made much sense to her, this insistence that she is all this _light_ in his eyes, all these things that he’s never had— doesn’t really know how to have.

“I won’t need you to leave me those stupid notes forever,” she explains, her voice muffled in the darkness of their bedroom, the mess of their blankets, “just a little bit longer. Please.”

“Whatever you want, darling,” he answers sleepily, his words dragging, not unlike the long, dramatic curvature in his ridiculous calligraphy.

When Emma Swan was alone, she had imagined it, sometimes. Being one in a set of “Nauseating Couple,” of notes on the fridge and the windshield of her car. But she had never, in a million years, _ever_ imagined the obnoxious, Dickens-level prose, nor the over-compensatory handwriting all over her post-it notes and newspaper ads and whatever else he could find, _just_ to make sure—just to be safe. She drifts away, but she’s not alone.


End file.
